I sit here, patiently, awaiting my fate.
When will Evan Williams and Mark Zuckerberg come to pimp slap my free Facebook and Twitter accounts out of my digital hands? I don’t know. Maybe never. My knees knock in anticipation.
Here’s why I ask.
Just today I received notice from NING that they will be discontinuing their free networks. They also tell me that if I want to continue using NING I need to, you guessed it, start coughing up some money, Honey.
Hello!
We’re writing today to let you know about some new and exciting changes coming to Ning. In July, we’re doing two very important things:
1. We’ll be phasing out all free Ning Networks.
We want to provide a new level of innovation to Network Creators — and build all the valuable features Network Creators have asked us to. To get there, we need to focus 100% on paid Ning Networks. This phasing out of free services won’t happen until July, so you’ll have plenty of time to weigh your options. We’ll do our best to provide you with a migration path if you don’t wish to continue with Ning, but we’d love to have you come along for all of the exciting future developments.
Earlier in the year, I got a similar notice from Filtrbox:
Hi Talmadge,
You are recieving this email because you have an active Filtrbox Basic account. I’m writing to inform you that Filtrbox Basic will be discontinued as of March 31st, 2010. As you probably know Filtrbox was recently acquired by Jive Software, Inc., and as a result our priorities and focus are shifting to better support the G2 service and our integration with Jive’s market-leading SBS platform. We are putting all of our time and energy in our B2B offering, and as a result need to discontinue the consumer service.
Are we seeing the end of Freemium? I still don’t totally understand how a business is supposed to make money if doesn’t actually sell anything. Perhaps the last few years were really just long forms of marketing research where they built the product over time and got feedback until they finally made something that people ARE willing to pay for.
The side effect of software as a service and rapid prototyping is that consumers expect things to be free. There’s no written agreement that these services are going to be free forever and the providers have no obligation to do so.
Honestly, since I was getting the digital milk for free, these guys were just becoming account BACN for me anyway.
At yet, I feel a bit cheated, put off that my pusher would finally reclaim his due. I don’t rely on these two services in the least, but Facebook? Twitter? Oh yeah. Can I live without them, probably, but I bet your organization can’t after all the Social Media nails the Twitterati have been zinging home for the last few years.
Even if it’s not Facebook or Twitter. Is there a free service upon which you rely heavily? If so, you may be asked to pay up, sucka. Daddy needs a new IPO.
Image Credit: Phillie Casablanca
